Engineering is a well respected profession in India. More and more students are choosing engineering as an undergraduate major and also as a career path. Civil Engineering is one of the most superior or high-ranking professions in India. It is considered to be one of the oldest engineering disciplines. The need for improvement in infrastructure to match the international standards is realized today, generating jobs for civil engineers.

Eligibility :
An educational career in civil engineering can be started after class 10th. Here the individual is only eligible to pursue Diploma program in civil engineering. After successful completion of the course, he/she can join as a junior engineer in various public and private sector jobs, defense jobs, jobs in railways etc.

The minimum eligibility for doing undergraduate program i.e. BE/B.Tech in Civil Engineering is + 2 Science with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. The selection is generally made on the basis of entrance tests (e.g. IITJEE, AIEEE, BITSAT etc.) conducted at both national and state level.

One can also continue his/her study further by joining ME/M.Tech programs offered by various engineering colleges/universities including the IITs and NITs. A GATE qualification can further make one’s admission process easier.

AMIE Associate Memberships of the Institution of Engineers also offers courses in civil engineering which is equivalent to BE/B.Tech provided by other institutes/universities.

Course Structure
Conventionally the courses being taught to the students in the Civil Engineering branch currently have very high bias towards structural engineering. Structural engineering subjects take about 50 percent of total course load while the remaining 4 areas take 50 percent, all together. It is a paradox that most of the final year civil student's projects end up with design of different structures that have no relevance to current or near future needs of industry.
The developments in space applications in terms of very high resolution remote sensing satellites, geographic information systems software and information technology, have lead to the emergence of new areas of disciplines, new challenges and enlarged requirements of civil engineering profession to cater to some of the following topics / tasks:
Environmental management, Transportation management, Water Resource management, Business and Services management, Automated City and rural area road network map, Applications in Urban infrastructure, waste management and comprehensive planning ,Property insurance and crisis management ,Disaster management ,Vehicle routing, tracking and mapping, Agriculture / Forest management, Topographical surveying Data simulation, visualization Real estate, banking, media, entertainment, tourism Electric power supply utilities planning Telecommunications etc

Redefining the graduate Civil Engineering Curriculum
There is a clear focus on the need for IT enabled civil engineers. In this emerging scenario the present course structure of Civil Engineering requires bifurcation into two branches. These two branches can be named or grouped into the following-

Best Colleges offering Civil Engineering courses:
BE/B.Tech course in Civil engineering is offered by almost all engineering colleges/technological universities including the IITs and NITs. The pioneer institutes are the Indian Institutes of Technology, Birla Institute of Technology, National Institutes of Technology, Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), College of Engineering and Technology (Anna University), Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTUH), Osmania University and several other state level engineering colleges such as CBIT, VNRVJIT etc.
IIT’s ,NIT’s, BITS Pilani, JNTU, Osmania Engineering college, CBIT etc are few reputed colleges offering best education in Civil engineering.

Some International Universities offering best education in civil engineering are:

USA: Berkeley, University of California

School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University

Civil and Environmental Engineering, A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University

Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science, Columbia University

Australia: Queensland University of Technology

Civil Engineering, University of Technology, Sydney

School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, The University of Adelaide